The Australian parliament has rejected gay marriage. On 19 September 2012 the House of Representatives rejected the private members bill by a vote of 98 to 42. Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition Conservative leader Tony Abbott voted against the bill.

The Archbishop of Sydney welcomed the vote, rejecting claims made by its supporters that gay marriage was “inevitable.”

Dr. Peter Jensen said it was now up to the church to be clear about what marriage was. “The problem is that we have become so confused about the nature and purpose of marriage that it is easy for those with unbiblical ideas to trade on this confusion and to distort the meaning of the fundamental institution of human society.”

Citing the centrality of a mother and father to the propagation and rearing of children, Dr. Jensen said “the solid platform on which a family is built is the public exchange of certain promises – promises of exclusive, life-long faithfulness – consummated in the marriage-bed.”

He added that “at the heart of our difficulty is the exaltation of the individual self and the idea of freedom being the capacity to choose as we will. If the self is the most important person in the world and the desires of the self have the right to be satisfied, it is not surprising if sex becomes unsatisfying and marriage very difficult to create and sustain.”